PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island — The new director of Rhode Island's health insurance exchange is making a case for keeping the state-run marketplace, as some lawmakers are calling for its demise. HealthSource RI has served as a model among the state-run marketplaces. Most other states use the federal exchange. Director Anya Rader Wallack says Rhode Island can use the state exchange as a tool to innovate and control health care costs in ways it couldn't if it switched. Gov. Gina Raimondo supports keeping the program in Rhode Island. But some say it isn't worth it. A group of lawmakers, led by...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Not only do more Americans have health insurance, but the number struggling with medical costs has dropped since President Barack Obama’s health care law expanded coverage, according to a study released Thursday. The Commonwealth Fund’s biennial health insurance survey found that the share of U.S. adults who did not get needed care because of cost dropped from 43 percent in 2012 to 36 percent last year, as the health care law’s main coverage expansion went into full swing. The proportion of people who got treatment but had problems paying their bills also dropped, from 41 percent in...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Here are 300 reasons why Democrats and unions that support Obamacare want exemptions forÂ themselves By Dan from Squirrel HillPosted on September 24, 2013. Updated on October 3, 2014.As the author of this blog post, I place it into the public domain. Anyone may freely copy it in any part or in its entirely, without asking my permission, and without paying any money. I do ask you please cite a link to http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/obamacare-59/I ask you to please show this list to as many people as possible. Sunshine really is the best disinfectant. I canÂ’t stop Obama...

Are you ready for Round Two? In a little more than a month, the federal Health Insurance Marketplace will swing open its virtual doors and let the masses in. Hopefully, things will go a little smoother than last year. I love Obamacare, but last year's open enrollment process was a mess. Personally, it only took me four applications, three online profiles and two attempts to verify my income before it was all said and done. However, I had it good. I have a friend who lost her employer-sponsored coverage midway through the year and is currently in health insurance hell:...

Earlier this year, supporters of the federal healthcare law known as ObamaCare enthusiastically celebrated reaching its signup goal, with reported enrollment topping eight million Americans. In the months since, however, there has been a noticeable dearth of updates regarding the relative success of the law since its famously rocky implementation. If a recent Investor’s Business Daily report is any indication, there might be good reason for the Obama administration’s silence. **SNIP** Another barometer of public sentiment comes from enrollment numbers reported by individual states. Washington, for example, is the only state that waited until enrollees had paid their first month’s...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Here are 296 reasons why hypocrite politicians and unions that support Obamacare want exemptions forÂ themselves By Dan from Squirrel HillPosted on September 24, 2013. Updated on July 27, 2014.As the author of this blog post, I place it into the public domain. Anyone may freely copy it in any part or in its entirely, without asking my permission, and without paying any money. I do ask you please cite a link to http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/obamacare-59/I ask you to please show this list to as many people as possible. Sunshine really is the best disinfectant. I canÂ’t stop...

Nearly twice as many people are expected to drop out of Colorado’s state-run health care exchange in the coming years than originally projected, leading to nearly $2 million lost in associated fees for the financially embattled program over the next two years. Connect for Health Colorado originally projected that 13 percent of enrollees will either leave the exchange in fiscal 2015 or fail to pay their bills, but now they project the figure to be as high as 24 percent, according to the Denver Post. If that’s the case, the exchange will lose out on about $1 million in fees...

More than one-fifth of the popu-lation of the United States was receiving Medicaid benefits before the passage of The Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA expanded eligibility to adults under the age of 65 who have income up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. As originally written, the ACA relied on two provisions intended to entice and prod states to expand their Medicaid programs. So far, about half of the states have expanded their programs. The carrot enticing states to expand their programs is the generous federal participation. This year, the federal government will cover 100% of the...

WASHINGTON — One of the latest Obamacare pitches to get young adults to sign up for health insurance starts out with a mother's kitchen note reminding her grown son to enroll. "Mom, you know I can't afford it," the young black man protests, as he sits down at a kitchen table next to a bespectacled woman with a laptop computer linked to the U.S. federal enrollment website, HealthCare.gov. "But for the first time you can," she replies reassuringly. "You go to the HealthCare.gov website, compare quality plans and you could get help paying for it."

Just cause they've signed up for Obamacare doesn't mean they're covered. Around one in five people who picked health insurance policies on the state and federal exchanges last year haven't paid their first month's premiums, according to insurers polled by CNNMoney. These folks will likely see their policy selection canceled and they'll be left uninsured. Some 2.1 million people signed up for a plan in time for their coverage to start January 1, according to the Obama administration. But with the payment deadlines stretching until January 31 at the latest, anywhere between 12% and 30% of those folks still haven't...

Last week the liberal documentary-maker Michael Moore prompted indigestion across the progressive wonk community by pronouncing Obamacare “awful.” In a New York Times op-ed, he bemoaned the way the president’s law preserved the health insurance industry rather than replacing it with a Medicare-for-all style single-payer system. The good news, Moore conceded, is that the previously uninsured (and often previously uninsurable) can get finally get coverage. The bad news is that their coverage will often be lousy and pose an enormous financial burden. He ended by calling for activists to lean on state politicians in an effort to beef the law...

**SNIP** “You could get a bad plan or incorrect plan, a plan other than the plan you picked, a plan where the premium was wrong,” said Tim Jost, a professor of law at Washington and Lee University. “You could end up with a plan that didn’t cover all the members of your family.” The Obama administration has repeatedly refused to say how many problems related to 834s still exist. But according to Bob Laszewski, the 834s problem is endemic of a broken backend at the federal exchange. The administration may have fixed many of the problems that the public encounters...

Let’s recap: If you like your insurance policy, you can keep it. No, wait. If you liked your policy, it was probably worthless anyway. Scratch that. If your junk policy was canceled and you still want it, you can keep it. Er, get it back. Whatever. **SNIP** The only prohibition is that the president not fail to execute the law owing to his opposition to a policy. Obviously, this is not the case here. As a political matter, it is also obvious that Obama is merely trying to right his own sinking ship, especially after Bill Clinton’s undoubtedly heartfelt advice...

'Substandard" and "cut-rate" is what President Obama calls the health plans that millions of Americans have lost, even though they wanted to keep them. Backpedaling on his promise that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan," Obama is now telling Americans another whopper: The insurance they can get on ObamaCare exchanges is a better deal. Don't believe him.

Fresh questions about whether the White House deceived Americans with claims they could bypass the broken HealthCare.gov website by using the phone or mailing in an application provoked an exasperated response Monday from White House press secretary Jay Carney. "I give up," Carney told ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, accusing the White House reporter of speaking "in tones of dramatic revelation" to inflate a story. The exchange centered around documents released by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Monday. Meeting notes from the administration "war room" handling the rollout of ObamaCare showed that consumers who called the ObamaCare...

**SNIP** CNN reports that insurers had nothing to do with it in at least three states, where the states themselves forced the cancellations in order to comply with ObamaCare: President Obama may have promised Americans that they can keep their insurance if they like it, but that’s not the case in at least three states where insurance companies are required to discontinue plans that don’t meet Obamacare’s new coverage standards. Virginia, Kentucky and Idaho have told insurance companies that they must scrap insurance plans that don’t meet the minimum coverage requirements laid out in the Affordable Care Act. Some states...

The president said Wednesday that the notices sent to consumers suggest that they're losing their coverage "somehow because of the Affordable Care Act." He argued, however, that consumers only lost coverage if insurers altered those policies at all after the law took effect. In that case, Mr. Obama said, insurers had to "replace them with quality, comprehensive coverage." "Today that promise means that every plan in the marketplace covers a core set of minimum requirements," he said. Insurers "can't use allergies or pregnancy... or the fact that you're a woman to charge you more." He advised the public, "If you're...

"All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it. ... I'm infuriated because I was lied to," one woman told the Los Angeles Times, as part of a story on how some middle-class Californians have been stunned to learn the real costs of Obamacare. And that lie looks like the biggest lie about domestic policy ever uttered by a U.S. president. The most famous presidential lies have to do with misconduct (Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" or Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations") or war. Woodrow...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Obama supporters will go hysterical over this well sourced list of 384 examples of his lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism,Â etc. By Dan from Squirrel HillPosted on August 15, 2013. Updated on October 24, 2013.As the author of this blog post, I place it into the public domain. Anyone may freely copy it in any part or in its entirely, without asking my permission, and without paying any money. I do ask you please cite a link to http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/I ask you to please show this list to as many people as possible â€“ and especially, to please...

**SNIP** "Can we just see if it works?" Amine Ashkar pleads as he tries to sign up for health insurance at the Community Clinic, Inc. in Silver Spring, Md. on Wednesday afternoon. "We can try," answers Martha Lopez, a former insurance agent who's helping people enroll. The screen gets stuck as she tries to set up an account for Ashkar, a 32-year-old bus driver who's looking for a better deal on his insurance. Lopez and her team of fellow navigators employed through the nonprofit clinic have been unable to complete a single enrollment online. "Why don't we try next week?"...

Obamacare wins! Now, let’s talk about that website. **SNIP** They also have to find enough success stories — people who have gotten their health coverage and are pleased by the experience — to counteract the comments Republicans are circulating from people who are complaining that the premiums are too high. There are people who are successfully signing up, on the federal website as well as state-run marketplaces like the one in Minnesota. But they haven’t been able to overshadow the stories of people who can’t even log in. “Since at the end of the day, Obamacare is a marathon and...

Every time I post that the IRS is clearly forbidden from punishing you for not paying the fine/tax, I get the same fictional responses. Maybe their goal is to make it sound so scary so that Obamacare gets magically repealed(poof) , but given that wont happen anytime soon this misinformation can have the unintended consequence of fooling/scaring people into complying and helping make Obamacare work. I found the section in the bill text and will posted it below as a vanity for future reference skip tp SPECIAL RULES. CHAPTER 48â€”MAINTENANCE OF MINIMUM ESSENTIAL COVERAGE Â‘Sec. 5000A. Requirement to maintain minimum...

State insurance regulators are encountering sites designed to mimic ObamaCare's enrollment portal, the online hub where millions of people are meant to purchase healthcare coverage. Attempts at imitating healthcare.gov have met with cease-and-desist letters; the sites could confuse consumers seeking to enter ObamaCare's marketplaces. In New Hampshire, the insurance commissioner reportedly cracked down on one webpage last week that could have been mistaken for the state's insurance exchange. And regulators from Washington, Pennsylvania and Connecticut are warning the health insurance industry against creating sites that might mislead the public. The healthcare law is expected to prompt fraud attempts similar to...

This is a story out of California that’s been making the rounds this weekend and definitely needs to be filed under, “Who could have possibly seen this coming?” Some of the people who managed the feat of getting through the dysfunctional web site and actually getting quotes on health care policies under Obamacare have already been finding out that “low priced” can mean something entirely different than they may have thought. This is particularly true of older citizens on fixed incomes. But if your income is low enough, you can just scratch off a lot of the cost of those...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 83 reasons why Democrats and unions are turning againstÂ Obamacare 1) After Obamcare was passed, unions that supported its passage requested and received special exemptionsWithin months after Obamacare was passed, Obama gave some organizations an exemption from some of the requirements of Obamacare. As time went on, more than 1,300 organizations received these exemptions.More than half of the people who are covered by insurance plans that received these exemptions are in union insurance plans. These unions supported the passage of Obamacare. But immediately after Obamacare was passed, these unions wanted exemptions from the very same law...

**SNIP** REMOVE ALL EXEMPTIONS, EXCEPTIONS, AND WAIVERS TO OBAMACARE. It’s that simple. The message is: If ObamaCare is so good for the people, then let everyone have it. Right now. This instant. The poor, the rich, the big unions, the big corporations, the politically connected, the lawyers, the lobbyists, and of course, Congress, too. Everyone means everyone. “Everyone” must specifically include Senators, Congressmen, their staffs, Obama himself, Michelle, Sasha and Malia. It’s everyone in the rowboat, or no one.

**SNIP** She then raised the ghost of George Washington. “This is a proxy fight for really the debate on the extent of government, and that has been a debate in the history of our country,” the California Democrat said, Politico reported. “But to say no government, that’s what President Washington cautioned against.” Ms. Pelosi didn’t specifically quote Mr. Washington, but she was perhaps referencing this statement, made by the first president during his 1796 Farewell Address: “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines,...

Dear Friends, On Friday, I joined members of both parties in supporting a key procedural motion - known as "invoking cloture" - to prevent a stalemate in the Senate that could have led to a government shutdown. Had this vote not succeeded, debate in the Senate would have come to a halt - making it harder to prevent a government shutdown. As you know, I fully support defunding, repealing and replacing Obamacare. I outlined the negative impact this law is having on New Hampshire in a speech on the Senate floor this week. In that speech, I also stated my...

(Reuters) - The U.S. government on Thursday announced new delays in rolling out President Barack Obama's healthcare reform, saying small business and Spanish-language health insurance enrollment services would not begin on Oct. 1 as planned. The postponements amount to a few weeks out of a months-long enrollment period aimed at signing up millions of uninsured Americans for health benefits. But they add to expectations of a slow start to the landmark social program which remains under attack by Republican leaders and faces formidable technical hurdles for states and the federal government. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)...

Let’s face it. It’s been a little political, this whole Obamacare thing, and so what you’ve had is an unprecidented effort that you’ve seen ramp up over that month or so in which those who have opposed the idea of universal healthcare in the first place, and have fought this thing tooth and nail though Congress and courts and so forth have been have been trying to scare and discourage people from getting a good deal, and some of you may have seen the commericials out there that are a little wacky. And the main message we have, and we’re...

There may be no official rule book for being a liberal, but that doesn't mean there aren't rules. There are actually quite a few rules liberals go by and the more politically active liberals become, the more rigidly they tend to stick to their own code of behavior. These rules, most of which are unspoken, are passed along culturally on the Left and viciously enforced. Ironically, many liberals could not explain these rules to you and don't even consciously know they're following them. So, by reading this article, not only will you gain a better understanding of liberals, you'll know...

ObamaCare has become big business for an elite network of Washington lobbyists and consultants who helped shape the law from the inside. More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010. Major lobbying firms such as Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, The Glover Park Group, Alston & Bird, BGR Group and Akin Gump can all boast an Affordable Care Act insider on their lobbying roster — putting them in a prime position to land coveted clients. “When [Vice President] Biden leaned over [during the signing...

**SNIP** The penalty for not having insurance next year will be $95 for an individual and up to $285 for a family, or 1 percent of household income, whichever is greater. Even though the penalties rise dramatically over the next three years - to $695 per uninsured individual or 2.5 percent of household income in 2016 - the cost of going without insurance will still be well below the price of most premiums. "When they look at all that, they will realize there is a way out," Brase said. If enough people take that way out, the theory goes, the...

There is new life in the battle to defund Obamacare, as more lawmakers are willing to use Congress’ power of the purse to stop the health-care law. 79 members of Congress have signed a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., asking to “defund the implementation and enforcement of ObamaCare in any relevant appropriations bill brought to the House floor in the 113th Congress.” The author of the letter, freshman Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., released a copy of the text and all the signatures today.

Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) said late Friday that he worries that the Internal Revenue Service is so incompetent "that they can't stop their own illegal behavior." The Illinois Republican, in an interview with Fox News, said that the agency was continuing to engage in the illegal targeting of conservative political groups, even after President Obama vowed the practice would stop when abuses were revealed earlier this summer. "After the investigation had already begun, after the illegal behavior had already been exposed, they were asking pro-life groups how much of their time was being spent in prayer, how much of their...

Lawmakers and staff can breathe easy — their health care tab is not going to soar next year. The Office of Personnel Management, under heavy pressure from Capitol Hill, will issue a ruling that says the government can continue to make a contribution to the health care premiums of members of Congress and their aides, according to several Hill sources. **SNIP** The problem was rooted in the original text of the Affordable Care Act. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) inserted a provision which said members of Congress and their aides must be covered by plans “created” by the law or “offered...

IRS chief Daniel Werfel says he wants to keep his health care plan, not switch to Obamacare: "Mr. Werfel, last week your employees who are a member of the National Treasury Employee's Union sent a form letter for union members to send in to ask they be exempt from the exchanges," a congressman asked. "Why are your employees trying to exempt themselves from the very law that you're tasked to enforce?" "I don't want to speak for the NTEU, but I'll offer a perspective as a federal employee myself and a federal employee at the IRS," said the IRS chief....

Applying our labor supply estimates directly to this population, we predict a decline in employment of between 530,000 and 940,000 in response to this group of individuals being made newly eligible for free or heavily subsidized health insurance. This would represent a decline in the aggregate employment rate of between 0.3 and 0.6 percentage points from this single component of the ACA. The researchers arrive at these numbers by examining the labor market impact of Tennessee’s 2005 decision to discontinue its expansion of TennCare, the state’s Medicaid system. They found that the TennCare disenrollment caused “a large and immediate labor...

House Speaker John Boehner today announced that the House will take votes next week on a one-year delay to both the employer mandate and the individual mandate in the president’s signature health care law. Boehner’s vow was instigated by the Obama administration’s decision last week to postpone implementation of the mandate for businesses. Thursday, the speaker ticked off examples of the types of people who would have to overcome the burden of the mandate – young professionals with student loans, single parents and families – and contrasted their struggle with financial companies, government contractors and big banks who stand to...

New Jersey --(Ammoland.com)- Obamacare has been showing signs of being so unenforceable, so expensive, and so utterly stupid that Obama’s administration has had to engage in all manner of patently illegal waivers and delays to maintain theirs lies about it. In the words of the late Chinese Communist dictator, Mao Zedong, Obamacare has been “a great leap forward” to reform healthcare in America. In China, the Great Leap killed an estimated forty million people between 1958 and 1961. There is no way of knowing how many Obamacare would kill when (and if) it is fully implemented. Presidents are not allowed...

The Obama administration delaying the start of the employer mandate part of ObamaCare this week is not the first snag in implementing the president’s signature health care law. Other parts of the 2010 law have already been delayed or discarded, including a requirement that businesses fill out an IRS form for any purchases over a year exceeding $600. Congress repealed that in June 2011. “It was extremely onerous (and) raised very little revenue,” says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director and chief economic policy adviser to Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign. Amanda Austin,...

If you thought the delay in the employer mandate was bad news for Obamacare, just wait. On Friday, Sarah Kliff and Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post discovered that the Obama administration had buried in the Federal Register the announcement that the government won’t be able to verify whether or not applicants for Obamacare’s insurance exchange subsidies are actually qualified for the aid, in the 16 states that are setting up their own exchanges. Instead, until at least 2015, these states will be able to “accept the applicant’s attestation [regarding eligibility] without further verification.” Without employer mandate, Feds to rely...

Tick, tick, tick. That’s the sound of the clock ticking down to when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPAACA) — the monstrosity known as Obamacare — will go into effect. If you think there are good reasons to detest this legislation now, just wait until you actually have to begin obeying it. As we celebrate this Independence Day weekend, I’ve got a suggestion on how the House of Representatives could take a giant step toward gaining our independence from this massive government takeover of our healthcare system. More on that later in this column. But first, let’s look...

The Affordable Care Act is So Unaffordable, Members of Congress and Their Aides are Quitting Because They Can't Afford It! BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, this is truly outrageous. There's a headline in The Politico today: "Obamacare? We Were Just Leaving..." And when I saw the headline, I thought it was gonna be an article about how Democrats are afraid of losing their seats because of all the skyrocketing costs of health premiums and all the other negatives associated with Obamacare. But that's not what this story is about. What this story's about is congressmen worried about themselves. In...

(CNSNews.com) – House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Thursday that health insurance premiums will go up under Obamacare because people who did not buy insurance before, and thus had no premium at all, will now be forced to buy insurance. She also urged people to be “optimistic” about Obamacare. “You just see,” Pelosi said. “I mean be optimistic about it. It is a very, very exciting enterprise.”

President Obama’s healthcare law is under attack in the courts even as the administration sprints toward full implementation. Despite surviving a stiff challenge at the Supreme Court last year, some of the law’s biggest provisions remain at risk from legal challenges. One set of lawsuits accuses the Internal Revenue Service of illegally implementing new subsidies to help people buy insurance. Separately, more than 60 lawsuits have been filed challenging the law’s mandate for health plans to cover birth control. A loss for the administration on the contraception mandate would undermine a key selling point for the law that Democrats used...

California has unveiled prices that consumers will pay for a selection of health plans offered through the state under the Affordable Care Act, providing a glimpse into how health care reform may look as it is rolled out across the nation. **SNIP** Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, who backed the health reform act, said the program would protect millions from bankruptcy due to medical costs. "Californians buying coverage on their own will now have access to the same quality coverage that people get through their employers at the same or lower rates," he said. California's exchange will offer coverage from 13...

In the last few weeks, numerous Hawaii healthcare industry leaders have stepped forward to create deniability for themselves in the upcoming Hawaii Health Connector/Health Exchange disaster. Those who are implementing Obamacare in Hawaii are now putting themselves on the record explaining that Obamacare will mean higher insurance premiums, fewer doctors and nurses, and shuttered hospitals. Here are their statements, accumulated in one place so that it can be clearly seen that many of those who are in charge are predicting failure: HMSA Chief Predicts Obamacare 'Rate Shock' for Hawaii Maui News May 9, 2013: If Hawaii consumers think health care...

When open enrollment begins in October under the new federal health care law, nearly 260,000 immigrants in Illinois will be eligible to apply for government-subsidized insurance, according to a study released Thursday. However, many of those now uninsured people are either unaware of the Affordable Care Act or are afraid to seek insurance because they have family members who are in the country illegally, the report by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights found. Those families will be targeted in a monthslong campaign to raise awareness of the new law as it begins to affect millions of uninsured...

**SNIP** According a survey by the American Action Forum, healthy young people in the individual or small-group insurance markets can look forward to rate increases averaging as much as 169%. In addition, ObamaCare requires all insurance plans to offer new and more expensive benefits. Remember President Obama’s promise that “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period?” Well, a recent study of more than 11,000 plans on the individual market found that less than 2% of existing plans are fully in compliance with the law’s benefit requirements. While current plans are technically grandfathered...